Kirk Butler was homeless in Syracuse for years. He slept on benches or in camps under bridges and begged for money. He kept himself warm with heroin.

Almost two years ago, he decided to get clean and come inside.

When he did, he heard voices. So Butler kept a little baseball bat in his new apartment.

The change was so hard that for the first week he had to sleep back at his old place — a park bench.

View full sizeDennis Nett / The Post-StandardJim Hill and his girlfriend, Cindy Gonzalez, sit in a homeless encampment under the I-690 East overpass, near where a homeless man recently burned to death in a fire.

Safety wasn’t walls and a door. It was being able to see the sky. It was not having to talk to strangers in the hallway.

Syracuse’s homeless population has grown 35 percent since 2010, according to data tracked by the homeless service providers in Onondaga County.

That is another symptom of the national recession. The people who used to show up at the shelters once or twice a year are now there all the time. Every night, the county’s shelters are pushed to the limit. They put cots in the aisles. Then, chairs and benches.

On any night, about 400 people sleep in some kind of temporary emergency shelter in Onondaga County, the agencies say. On Tuesday, the number was 418. Last year, 3,986 different people slept in shelters. In 2010, that number was just under 3,000, according to Liddy Hintz, director of emergency and child welfare services at the Salvation Army, who maintains the database.

This year, it will be about 4,600. That’s more than a 50-percent increase over 2010.

Compared to those figures, the number of homeless people living away from any shelter is small. It’s 50 or fewer, said Jim Taylor, chairman of Homeless and Housing Coalition of Syracuse and Onondaga County, which is made up of groups and agencies that serve homeless people.

But there is anecdotal evidence that something is happening with this group of hard-core homeless.

Their numbers seem to be growing and their problems more visible. Aside from the two deaths, there have been reports of fighting between panhandlers for the good spots. Businesses near high-traffic, high-yield corners have complained of homeless people harassing diners and making messes.

The outreach workers say they used to know almost all of the homeless who hung out on the streets. But now there are new faces, many of them younger men. Service providers don’t know where those people are coming from or why they’re here.

City police, too, have noticed the increase, said Deputy Police Chief Joe Cecile. They see more people on the streets, more people panhandling and more unfamiliar faces. But they have not noticed an uptick in violence or reports of trouble, Cecile said.

View full sizeDennis Nett / The Post-StandardTremaine Crawford, a volunteer for the Rescue Mission, watches for homeless people who may be in need. On most evenings, he drives around the city dropping off sandwiches and drinks.

A mostly empty van

A little before dusk most nights, Tremaine Crawford leaves the Rescue Mission in an unmarked black van with a cooler of sandwiches and juice boxes. He drives from homeless camp to homeless camp, checking on the people and delivering food, clothing and blankets to the takers.

Onondaga County has six homeless shelters run by nonprofit agencies. The county Department of Social Services, which helps to fund the shelters, also puts families up at local hotels.

The Rescue Mission is for single, sober men over 18. Men who can’t give up the bottle or drugs for the night are welcome at the Oxford Inn, run by Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities also has overflow apartments that are always full and the Dorothy Day House for women. The Salvation Army has a shelter for families and another for women.

Driving the Rescue Mission’s van, Crawford has come to know all kinds of homelessness. There are “fliers,” people who hold signs asking for money and who live in shelters. There are homeless who live under bridges and receive an income — Social Security, disability payments or veterans benefits — using another address.

Since Crawford began his job in March, not one person has taken him up on an offer to take shelter.

That reluctance to come in, say those who work with the homeless, is a longstanding challenge.

“They have to come out from under the bridge,” said Dan Sieburg, Rescue Mission’s director of housing, who rides with Crawford.

For many homeless people, money isn’t the only problem. Last year, 857 of those served in shelters reported having a mental illness, according to data collected from the agencies. Another 473 said they were alcohol abusers and 588 said they were drug abusers.

You need an address

Near the Townsend Street 690 ramp, close to where Wilkin died in the fire, Crawford pulls the van off the street, hops out, runs around a vine-covered fence to a tent-like assemblage of mattresses, blankets and plastic tarps.

James Hill and Cindy Gonzalez crawl out and sit in an opening. As fliers, they hold signs asking for money near the Townsend Street ramp. Hill says they make about $10 a day.

Crawford brings them sandwiches and leaves a few for others.

Hill, 31, says he’s been homeless 12 years. Gonzalez said she’s been homeless one year, after being evicted from her apartment in the Valley. They met at a drug and alcohol rehab program, they said.

Both were upset over the recent deaths. Hill says he’d once had his own tent burned down while he was away.

Another man who stays in the camp, Randy, walks up. He has a black eye. His face is weathered and greasy. He’s been drinking. He looks at the visitors and launches into a curse-filled tirade. He knew Noce, he said. He tried to get her help, but no one would help.

“Because we didn’t have a (expletive) address,” he says.

Crawford stays behind with him alone for a few minutes. When Crawford returns to the van, it’s minutes before he speaks. He’s shaken.

As Crawford drives away, Sieburg talks about getting help to Hill and Gonzalez. As long as they don’t have an address, they can’t get in “the system.”

“The system can be very beneficial,” Sieburg said. “It can provide you with food, shelter, an apartment and public assistance. But it can’t if you’re under a bridge.”

View full sizeDennis Nett / The Post-StandardMike displays a sign along Hiawatha Blvd., near the off ramp for I-690 East.

Too many rules

Coming in also means breaking the connections they’ve made under the bridge, moving to places they see as scary.

The men’s shelters are both open rooms with beds inches apart. They’re loud and crowded. There are rules. If someone is outside because they don’t like strangers, that environment is a hard sell.

Near Hiawatha Boulevard, Mike shares a camp with his sister, Jeannie, and her husband, Jay. Mike’s built an insulated shed with tarps. Sometimes people throw things at them and spit on them, they say. But they have no interest in coming to a shelter.

“The Oxford Inn, that’s like a prison sentence,” Mike said. ’’They call it the House of Pain. If you’re not a fighter, you’re not going to make it down there. The Rescue Mission? Too many rules. We tend to drink our beer. You can’t drink and stay there.”

And Jeannie would have to go to a women’s shelter.

Mike said he grew up in abusive foster homes and dropped out of “the system” at 14. He survives on flying, making between $16 and $28 a day. Sometimes it’s enough for food, tobacco and rolling papers and a $5 shower at a truck stop. Sometimes, it’s not. So they have to choose.

A different approach

Homelessness is getting attention and money. Many agencies use a combination of public and private money to run shelters, outreach programs, counseling and housing programs.

Onondaga County spends $2.7 million a year funding shelters and other programs. It also spends hundreds of thousands housing people who can’t find a spot in shelters — last year emergency hotel room stays cost the county $465,000.

Syracuse and Onondaga County received more than $3 million in one-shot federal stimulus money to help get people out of shelters and into housing. Beyond that, the federal government provides $7 million a year to fund programs.

But trying to help the hard-core homeless is a mission that needs more than money; it needs innovation.

Catholic Charities has 35 apartments opening up that might be a small answer.

Taylor, the homeless coalition chairman and executive at Catholic Charities, said the recent deaths prompted the group to try to identify those living outside the shelters and find a way to bring them in to the apartments.

This could be different. They wouldn’t have to stop at a shelter first. They wouldn’t have to stop drinking. They could come together. They would just have to come inside.

In 2007, the city broke up two homeless camps after complaints of violence. The residents of one entire camp — on Pearl Street — eventually were convinced to come inside to apartments run by Catholic Charities, Taylor said.

Sometimes, one person will come in and friends who are still outside will visit. The person who comes in becomes a bridge, Taylor said.

Jim Delaney used to live on the streets. He said he tried to convince Noce to come in. But he couldn’t.

“When people live on the street, they have a tendency to give up after a while. You get used to it,” he said. “I lived on the street off-and-on for 10 years.”

Steady pressure from his mother and sister brought Delaney in. He now lives in an apartment.

Butler, the 61-year-old heroin addict, said he came inside for a different reason. He overdosed four times in a row. Once in the men’s bathroom at a library, he said.

“I saw the coffin closing,” Butler said, sitting on a bench he used to use for a bed in a pocket park on South Salina Street.

He stayed nights at the Oxford Inn while he spent his days on an ugly ride, detoxing cold turkey from heroin in an outpatient program.

In the nest

Near an old factory on the city’s north side, Crawford, the Rescue Mission van driver, carries a sandwich and some juice boxes across an overgrown parking lot and into some bushes.

On the other side of the bushes is a sprawling mound of glass and plastic bottles, food tins, rags and bits of paper. It stretches 15 feet across at the bottom.

It’s like a nest: Tucked inside is Brian Jay Edwards, 51.

There are books strewn around him; Edwards likes science fiction and horror. And there’s a transistor radio.

Edwards says he had a stroke. His speech is slurred and he has lost use of his right arm. Before the stroke he drew a lot. He has sketchbooks full of drawings, some realistic, some more like fantasy comic books.

He’s been there, in that nest, for four and a half years. For a while, he says, he stayed in an apartment of a friend who had a crack addiction.